The present invention generally relates to the field of fast multimedia browsing. It particularly refers to different implementations of a conceptual framework which defines basic mechanisms for efficiently previewing multimedia content.
Today, the availability of digital content archives comprising huge amounts of digital multimedia data requires efficient browsing mechanisms for extracting relevant information. To avoid information overload, a browsing system needs to preselect shots of information from a database in a user-adequate manner. Additionally, such a browsing system should be able to support continuous presentation of time-dependent media. Users of browsing applications often have vague information needs which can only be described in conceptual terms. Additionally, a general browsing system must offer mechanisms for interactive inspection of the information following a user's instructions.
The use of a physical metaphor is a common strategy for designing a user interface system. For example, as described in “Multimodal Video Indexing: A Review of the State-of-the-Art” (Technical Report 2001-20, Intelligent Sensory Information Systems Group, University of Amsterdam) by C. G. M. Snoek, M. Worring, in conventional video indexing systems according to the state of the art the technique of “book indexing” is applied to the field of video browsing.
Analysis of human behavior shows that many people normally leaf quickly through the pages of an unknown magazine before buying this magazine at the news kiosk. Thereby, a combination of manual and mental processes is used to quickly browse the information contained in the magazine until reaching a certain level of understanding. Such a process can be iterated several times for reaching higher and higher levels of comprehension of the magazine's content. The “reader browsing speed” is dynamically adapted to the level of his/her interests. If the reader is interested in the content of a page, he/she can scroll around with fine-grained steps. Alternatively, if he/she is not interested in this content, he/she can jump forward or backward towards distant pages in a non-linear way, while picking up some information from the intermediate pages.